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ゐ
(: , : ) is a nearly-obsolete Japanese (Japanese phonetic characters, each of which represents one mora). The combination of a W-column kana letter with in was introduced to represent iin the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that represented , and that and represented distinct pronunciations before merging to some time between the Kamakura and Taishō periods. Along with the for ( in , in ), this was deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946, to be replaced by in all contexts. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the form (U- mall-i is preferred. The still sees some modern-day usage, however. The spelling of whisky is usually , but is sometimes written stylistically, such as . The name of the comedy duo Yoiko is written , a character in the video game series '' Touhou Project'' has the name (Tewi) and the first opening theme to the Future Diary anime series is titled (Kuusou Mesorogiwi). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Kana Usage
The , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation. It differs from modern usage ('' Gendai kana-zukai'') in the number of characters and the way those characters are used. There was considerable opposition to the official adoption of the current orthography, on the grounds that the historical orthography conveys meanings better, and some writers continued to use it for many years after. The historical orthography is found in almost all Japanese dictionaries, such as ''Kōjien.'' In the current edition of the ''Kōjien,'' if the historical orthography is different from the modern spelling, the old spelling is printed in tiny ''katakana'' between the modern ''kana'' and ''kanji'' transcriptions of the word. Ellipses are used to save space when the historical and modern spellings are ident ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as ''"a"'' (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as ''"ka"'' (か); or ''"n"'' ( ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French language, French, Portuguese language, Portuguese or Polish language, Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of ん "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okinawan Writing System
Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island, was once the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom. At the time, documents were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most Japanese, as well as some Okinawans, tend to think of Okinawan as merely a regional dialect of Japanese, even though it is not intelligible to monolingual Japanese speakers. Modern Okinawan is not written frequently. When it is, the Japanese writing system is generally used in an ''ad hoc'' manner. There is no standard orthography for the modern language. Nonetheless, there are a few systems used by scholars and laypeople alike. None of them are widely used by native speakers, but represent the language with less ambiguity than the ''ad hoc'' conventions. The Roman alphabet in some form or another is used in some publications, especially those of an academic nature. Systems Conventional usages The modern conventional ''ad hoc'' spelling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most prominent magana system being ; the two descendants of man'yōgana, (2) , and (3) . There are also , which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. In current usage, 'kana' can simply mean ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as glosses ( ruby text or ''furigana'') for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule. Each kana character (syllabogram) corresponds to one sound or whole syllable in the Japanese language, unlike kanji regular script, which corresponds to a meaning ( logogram). Apart from the five vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iroha
The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering for the syllabary, in the same way as the ''A'', ''B'', ''C'', ''D''... sequence of the Latin alphabet. Text The first appearance of the Iroha, in was in seven lines: six with seven morae each, and one with five. It was also written in man'yōgana. 以呂波耳本部止 千利奴流乎和加 餘多連曽津祢那 良牟有為能於久 耶万計不己衣天 阿佐伎喩女美之 恵比毛勢須 Structurally, however, the poem follows the standard 7–5 pattern of Japanese poetry (with one hypometric line), and in modern times it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gojūon
In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed. Each kana, which may be a hiragana or katakana character, corresponds to one sound in Japanese. As depicted at the right using hiragana characters, the sequence begins with あ (''a''), い (''i''), う (''u''), え (''e''), お (''o''), then continues with か (''ka''), き (''ki''), く (''ku''), け (''ke''), こ (''ko''), and so on and so forth for a total of ten rows of five columns. Although nominally containing 50 characters, the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a syllabic chart in modern Japanese is therefore 46. Some of these ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
We (kana)
in , or in , is a nearly obsolete Japanese . The combination of a W-column kana letter with in was introduced to represent ein the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that represented , and that and indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period, when they both came to be pronounced as , later shifting to the modern . Along with the kana for ( in , in ), this was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with and . It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form (U- mall-e is preferred, as in for "west". The still sees some modern-day usage. Ebisu is usually written as , but sometimes like , and name of the beer , which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the ''Rebuild of Evangelion'' series is . is sometimes written with a , , to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the '' Man'yōshū'', a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with ''man'yōgana.'' Texts using the system also often use Chinese characters for their meaning, but ''man'yōgana'' refers to such characters only when used to represent a phonetic value. The values were derived from the contemporary Chinese pronunciation, but native Japanese readings of the character were also sometimes used. For example, (whose character means 'tree') could represent either (based on Middle Chinese ) or or (meaning 'tree' in Old Japanese). Simplified versions of ''man'yōgana'' eventually gave rise to both the hirag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renga
''Renga'' (, ''linked verse'') is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry in which alternating stanzas, or ''ku (''句), of 5-7-5 and 7-7 mora (sound units, not to be confused with syllables) per line are linked in succession by multiple poets. Known as ''tsukuba no michi'' ( ''The Way of Tsukuba'') after the famous Tsukuba Mountain in the Kantō region, the form of poetry is said to have originated in a two-verse poetry exchange by Yamato Takeru and later gave birth to the genres '' haikai'' () and haiku ().Kaneko, Kinjirō. ''Rengashū, Haikaishū''. Tōkyō: Shōgakkan, 2001. Print. The genre was elevated to a literary art by Nijō Yoshimoto (, 1320–1388), who compiled the first imperial renga anthology Tsukubashū () in 1356. The most famous renga master was Sōgi (, 1421–1502), and Matsuo Bashō (, 1644–1694) after him became the most famous ''haikai'' master. Renga sequences were typically composed live during gatherings of poets, transcribed oral sessions known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waka (poetry)
is a type of poetry in classical Japanese literature. Although ''waka'' in modern Japanese is written as , in the past it was also written as (see Wa, an old name for Japan), and a variant name is . Etymology The word ''waka'' has two different but related meanings: the original meaning was "poetry in Japanese" and encompassed several genres such as ''chōka'' and ''sedōka'' (discussed below); the later, more common definition refers to poetry in a 5-7-5-7-7 metre. Up to and during the compilation of the '' Man'yōshū'' in the eighth century, the word ''waka'' was a general term for poetry composed in Japanese, and included several genres such as , , and . However, by the time of the '' Kokinshūs compilation at the beginning of the tenth century, all of these forms except for the ''tanka'' and ''chōka'' had effectively gone extinct, and ''chōka'' had significantly diminished in prominence. As a result, the word ''waka'' became effectively synonymous with ''tanka'', and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fujiwara No Teika
, better-known as Fujiwara no Teika"Sadaie" and "Teika" are both possible readings of ; "...there is the further problem, the rendition of the name in romanized form. Teika probably referred to himself as Sadaie, and his father probably called himself Toshinari, but the Sino-Japanese versions of their names were used by their contemporaries, and this practice is still observed." pg 681–692, note 2 of ''Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century'', Donald Keene. 1999, Columbia University Press, (1162 – September 26, 1241), was a Japanese anthologist, calligrapher, literary critic,"The high quality of poetic theory (''karon'') in this age depends chiefly upon the poetic writings of Fujiwara Shunzei and his son Teika. The other theorists of ''tanka'' writing, stimulated by father and son either to agreement or disagreement, contributed also toward the high level of poetic theory, but we may say that Shunzei and Teika were most rep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
